Two goes into one for Fenland’s Fuso Canter 18 April 2013

One of the UK's leading textile rental providers is cleaning up with a new 7.5-tonne Fuso Canter that's being double-shifted and doing the work of two of its previous commercial vehicles.

Fenland Laundries, of Skegness, Lincolnshire, is using the Canter 7C18 light truck to make trunking runs to and from Sunderland at night, followed by local deliveries and collections during the day.

Group transport and logistics manager James Bell says the firm is so impressed that it has already placed an order for a further three identical Canter trucks from Liverpool Mercedes-Benz dealer Road Range Commercials.

The existing light truck works for the company's Micronclean division, which provides clean-room garments to the pharmaceutical and micro-electronics industries.

"This work was previously undertaken by another 7.5-tonner, but it was bigger than we needed," explains Bell.

"The Canter, by contrast, is perfect for this job. It's relatively compact for a vehicle in this weight category, and this means that, as well as being highly manoeuvrable, it's also very cost-effective to operate."

Fitted with a GRP box body, with side door, by Lincoln Commercial Bodies, and a 1,000kg DEL tail-lift, the Canter is run under contract hire from Road Range's in-house finance arm Premier Vehicle Rentals.

"The Canter offers a very impressive payload of close to four tonnes, too," continues Bell. "We don't often reach the limit, but it's nice to know that the capacity is there, should we need it.

"And the fact that it's not too big meant we could also use it during the day to do the work of one of our vans," states Bell. "A traditional 7.5-tonner would struggle to access some of [our] tight locations, but the Canter has no such problems."

Fenland Laundries specified its Canter with a Duonic twin-plate, dual-clutch automated transmission, designed to provide smooth shifting and economical performance with none of the frictional losses found in traditional automatic gearboxes.

Author
Brian Tinham

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